SEC chairman Christopher Cox, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, New York Fed president Tim Geithner and Treasury undersecretary Robert Steel testified before the US Senate Banking Committee on April 3 about their involvement in the Bear Stearns rescue.

Cox said: "I recently wrote to the Basel Committee offering my strong support for their proposed work to consider whether the capital adequacy standards applicable to internationally active sophisticated institutions should be extended to deal explicitly with liquidity risk”.

• Cox testimony